Science Vs - Skin Care: Is Anti-Aging a Scam?

Episode Date: May 18, 2023

When it comes to keeping our skin looking younger, what works? Retinol, hyaluronic acid, vitamin C? This simple question has become confused by the billion-dollar skin-care industry, which floods us with scientific-sounding claims about the chemicals they say we should put on our face. We find out the real science on what you need for healthy skin with Dr Natalia Spierings, Dr Szu Wong and Kirsten Drysdale.  Find our transcript here: https://bit.ly/sciencevsskincare  In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Chapter 1: Promises of the skin care industry (04:12) Chapter 2: Why do we get wrinkles?  (06:36) Chapter 3: Can skin care products remove wrinkles?  (14:15) Chapter 4: Can vitamin A cream reduce wrinkles?  (21:30) Chapter 5: 99% reduction in fine lines!  (26:55) Chapter 6: Moisturizers and sunscreen (29:00) Chapter 7: Is skin care a waste of money? This episode was produced by Wendy Zukerman, with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horn, R.E. Natowicz, and Michelle Dang. We’re edited by Blythe Terrell. Mix and sound design by Catherine Anderson. Music written by Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, So Wiley, Peter Leonard, and Bumi Hidaka. Gimlet’s managing director is Nicole Beemsterboer. Fact checking by Diane Kelly. Thanks to all the researchers who helped us with this episode including Dr Yousuf Mohammed, Professor Chris Anderson, Dr Lifeng Kang, Dr Heather Benson, and Professor Sara Brown. Special thanks to Flora Lichtman, the Zukerman Family and Joseph Lavelle Wilson.  Science Vs is a Spotify Original Podcast and a Gimlet production.   Follow Science Vs on Spotify, and if you wanna receive notifications every time we put out a new episode, tap the bell icon! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Okay, so we're looking into the mirror now. How do you feel when you look? I feel a bit confronted, to be honest. Yeah, me too. Osman is a very old mate of mine, and he's a little nervous to be on the show. No, I'm cool. I'm cool. Yeah.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool. Okay, so we are looking at our faces in front of this giant mirror with incredibly bright lights. Tell me what you say when you look at your skin right now. A few lines, forehead lines. I've had them like when I was very, like maybe just after high school, they kind of started and they've always just kind of been there. So with this bloody lighting, Wendy, that's all I could see. What I could see was this vertical line between my eyes.

I call it my, like, science versus Crix, because it's this sceptical look. It's a found line, it's a found line. No, sceptical line. Sceptical line. But you have it too. It's a bust that myth line. Yeah.

But then there's science line. But Oz doesn't want a but then there's science line. But Oz doesn't want a but then there's science line. He'd like it to gently go away along with his other fine lines. And he wants some nice skincare to do the work. Something that doesn't need Botox. I don't want to do any kind of invasive procedures or anything. So it's just skincare that I kind of look to. For about a decade, Oz has used fancy

creams to fight off wrinkles. But now he's getting a bit older. He's in his 30s. And he's wondering if they're doing anything. And that is what we are diving into today. I'm Wendy Zuckerman and you're listening to Science Versus from Gimlet. And today on the show, we are pitting facts against fine lines. As we find out, is there anything you can slap on your face to prevent wrinkles? And if you've already got them, to make them go away? I have no idea. Wendy, tell me.

Tell me. Okay, so the first thing I want to do is just to see what's in these anti-ageing creams. OK, let's go. Let's do it. OK, OK, I'll put my shoes on. Oz and I headed to this department store in Sydney. So we're in the store. And went straight to the skincare section, which was huge.

All the big brands were there. You know, the ones with the Frenchy-sounding names. And they were all promising one thing. The thing Oz know, the ones with the Frenchy sounding names. And they were all promising one thing. The thing Oz wants. The thing I want. Visibly corrects lines and wrinkles. Stronger, younger looking skin. Youth generating power. Youth generating power. Proven anti-aging efficacy. Visibly diminishes lines and wrinkles. Oh, can you read this one? Tender and wrinkles. Ooh, can you read this one? Tender and bouncy. Tender and bouncy.

I know. And some of these creams were pricey. One small jar was two grand. What could they possibly be putting in there to justify that? Jargon. I'm supposed to be the sceptical one. What are they putting in these products? We saw the same stuff over and over again.

Retinol skin renewing. This one also has retinol. Retinol. Even I'd heard of that. Collagen. Vitamin C. Hyaluronic acid. There it is, big sign. Hyaluronic acid. There it is, big sign, hyaluronic

acid. I feel like I'm not doing enough now. I feel like there's a whole world out there with all these skincare products. There's got to be some basis behind it, right? Right? That's what we're getting to the bottom of today. And even if you're not into skincare and wrinkles, stick around. Because it turns out the science of trying to engineer a fountain of youth is very fun. When it comes to skincare, there's a lot of promises that our skin will be tender and bouncy. But then there's science. Science vs. Skincare is coming up just after the break.

What does the AI revolution mean for jobs, for getting things done? Who are the people creating this technology? And what do they think? I'm Rana El-Khelyoubi, an AI scientist, entrepreneur, investor, and now host of the new podcast, Pioneers of AI. Think of it as your guide for all things AI, with the most human issues at the center. Join me every Wednesday for Pioneers of AI. And don't forget to subscribe wherever you tune in. It's season three of The Joy of Why, and I still have a lot of questions. to subscribe wherever you tune in. So brace yourselves. Get ready to learn. I'm Jana Levin. I'm Steve Strogatz. And this is...

Quantum Magazine's podcast, The Joy of Why. New episodes drop every other Thursday, starting February 1st. Welcome back. Today, we're ironing out the wrinkles in the billion dollar skincare industry to find out if there's anything we can put on our skin to prevent wrinkles or to make those lines we've already got disappear. And I found the perfect person to help us with this. You wrote an entire book on this topic. Yes, I did. This is Dr. Natalia Spearings,

a dermatologist who works with the King's College Hospital London. And the first thing I wanted to ask her is, when you look deep in our skin, what's changing as we get older? Like, why do we get wrinkles? And she said a lot of this comes down to proteins in our skin, like elastin and collagen. They're sort of like scaffolding that give our skin structure. And when we're younger, that scaffolding works really well.

So in a younger person, the collagen looks more nicely lined up. Like the sheets are all nice in a row. You know, everything looks ordered and the elastin is there and it's all nicely figured, you know, in a little arrangement. And it looks pretty. But as we age, it all gets a bit wonky. There's less collagen and it's all a bit like morphed and there's less elastin and the elastin that is there doesn't function properly. That's why baby skin is always so smooth and older people's skin is a little more rough because of that change in structure.

Because all the scaffolding underneath is messed up. Yeah, it gets all screwed up. This happens thanks to time, you know, just the beautiful process of aging. But it's also because of the sun. UV rays can penetrate into the skin, damaging that elastin and collagen. And if you want to know what sun damage can do to your skin, then go to the mirror, pull down your pants, and look at your butt. Because people generally don't expose their butts to sun ever. That skin is always going to be smoother, softer. It doesn't have any age spots. I have been looking at my butt and then looking

at my face and I'm like, whoa, that skin damage is real. Yeah, the skin damage is real. Of course it is, yeah. So that's your baby skin. That's what your skin would look like if you never went in the sun, ever. So that's what you're trying to get back to. We sure are. So how do I get back to my baby butt skin? But on my face. And we want to know if we can do it with a cream or serum. Like, is it even possible? And it turns out that for any ingredient in your skin cream to get deep into the skin and fix up that screwed up scaffolding, it has to go on an epic journey, which starts at the foot of a basically impenetrable

fortress, the top layer of our skin, or as the nerds call it, the stratum corneum. So this stratum corneum is the biggest barrier and for good reasons. Here's Dr Sue Wong, a pharmacist at Keele University in the UK. And Sue told us that this layer of skin is there to prevent crap in the environment getting into your body. It's our first line of defence. A sign of very good, healthy skin is that you have a very good barrier. But quite ironically is that obviously then if you want to introduce something, then it needs to overcome this barrier. And getting past this barrier is formidable.

It's made of cells that are tightly layered together like a brick wall. And squished between those cells is fat. That's like the mortar. So if you are a molecule inside a skincare product, how do you bust through? So you as a molecule, you can diffuse through, directly through that layer of bricks,

just like a ghost walking through a wall, I suppose. Okay. Or you can actually follow the mortar. And that is what a lot of chemicals try to do. Sneak in through the mortar, which is made of fat, right? So to get through, you need to be fat soluble. If you are water soluble, forget about it. And right there, a bunch of skincare products are already out of the game. Like one popular skin care ingredient, vitamin C. You might read about how it's a powerful antioxidant that sucks up stress in your skin. Yeah, well.

It's definitely water soluble, yes. And we need to be fat soluble to pass the barrier. Yes. Then it's not getting in. Is that right? Yes, correct. Even scientists at L'Oreal acknowledge that garden variety vitamin C can't really penetrate your skin. Okay, so being fat soluble, that is step number one. Another thing? You want to be a very, very small molecule. So the smaller, the better, in fact.

One reason for this is because the space between the cells that you are trying to squeeze through is teeny tiny. And because of this hurdle, a whole batch of ingredients in your favorite skincare products are out. Like collagen. It's too big. There's some evidence that it might help if you eat it as a supplement, but applied to the skin? No dice.

Hyaluronic acid, another super popular skincare product, is out too. In fact, here's how Natalia described the idea of getting garden variety hyaluronic acid in a cream past our top layer of skin. It's like squeezing an elephant through a cat flap. That's exactly what you're trying to do. It's never going to happen. And I asked Sue, if these fancy ingredients like hyaluronic acid aren't penetrating deep into my skin to where the wrinkles are, what are they doing?

It's pretty much just going to sit on the surface. To be honest, I think every time you wash your face, you're just washing it off. To get around this fact that some ingredients are just way too big to penetrate the skin or are water-ble. Researchers have tried to do things like use shrunken down molecules or put them in different suspensions like fancy gels that kind of makes them fat soluble. And Sue reckons it is possible that these souped up chemicals might do something. But the studies in this space don't tend to be very good quality. Like often they don't even use placebo controls. And then even if you do manage to get some very special formulation of something, like say, let's go back to vitamin C. Well, then you run into other problems. Like

vitamin C is notoriously unstable. Those fancy serums that you get, they often come in glass bottles, right? But vitamin C breaks down when it's exposed to light. And that's not all. To be honest, I'll be more worried if you're exposing it to air. There's a tendency for it to oxidize. So what happens if it gets oxidized? Okay, so essentially the moment it's oxidized, it loses its antioxidant properties. Oh. And you can actually see this happening in your bottle at home

when the stuff inside starts to go brown. One study done by a skincare company tried to put vitamin C inside this hoity-toity optimized emulsion to stop it from breaking down. And even then, after a month of living in a glass tube exposed to some oxygen, about a third of the vitamin C was gone. A third. Basically, every time we use our droppers to release some vitamin C serum onto our skin, air gets in and a vitamin C angel loses its wings.

I talked to Oz about this. It's being contaminated by air. Yes. Oh, no way. I'm shocked. I'm shocked. I shouldn't be shocked, but I'm a little bit shocked. So bottom line, it's just incredibly difficult for an ingredient to go from being slopped on

to deep down where all that screwed up scaffolding is. And I know we didn't go through all the ingredients that you see out there, from CoQ10 to all those peptides, but one big review paper on this said that the scientific evidence for a lot of these products is, quote, scarce. And I just wouldn't trust a lot of the stuff you read on these bottles. Like several years ago, the Consumer Protection Watchdogs in the US, the FTC, started looking into some of L'Oreal's claims. They'd advertised that some of their products boost the activity of genes,

giving us visibly younger skin in just a week. But when the FTC dug into L'Oreal's evidence to back that stuff up, they concluded the claims were, quote, false or misleading. And the two parties settled. But never fear. Don't give up hope just yet. False or misleading? And the two parties settled. But never fear. Don't give up hope just yet.

Because after the break, we find one thing that really might pass the science versus test here. And we'll meet someone who played one big trick on the skincare industry. You feel so naughty but it's so fun because you go, well, if the big guys can do this, little old me can do it too. Coming up. Welcome back. Today we're asking whether you can put something on your skin to stop wrinkles.

And much like those tanning beds in the 90s, we just roasted a whole lot of skincare products. Oh, stop it. But now we're going to look at one of the most common chemicals that people put on their skin to prevent wrinkles, vitamin A creams. There's a few different versions out there. The one that a lot of you probably know is retinol.

And then there's the prescription version, which is called tretinoin or TRET. Here's Natalia again. They are a huge market. They're generally quite pricey and patients really believe that they can do something. So can they? Let's start by diving into the prescription stuff, TRET. It's mostly used for acne and it works for that, but studies going back decades have tested to see if this can help with our wrinkles too.

They do stuff like get people to put tretinoin on their skin for months, take biopsies of their skin and look at it under powerful microscopes. And after all that, they find that for some people... You have increased collagen and elastin in the dermis. You actually see more collagen in the dermis, in that lower layer? Yeah, so tretinoin, basically, it helps stop the degradation of collagen and elastin. So this is exciting, right?

Finally, we have a product that is getting down to our wrinkles and actually doing something. And when it comes to preventing wrinkles before they happen, while there's not a lot of research in this space, some studies do suggest that it might help with that as well. But before you head to the doctor for a prescription, let's find out how much of a difference this stuff can make. Like, will it make me look like I'm 21 again? Well, in the US, there's a version of Tret that's approved by the FDA to get rid of wrinkles. It's called Renova.

And instead of looking at our fine lines, let's look at the fine print of how well this product works. Okay, so the FDA approved Renova off the back of studies involving more than 500 people with lighter skin. Half of them used Tretinoin on their face for around six months. And afterwards, they looked to see whether their skin had improved or not. Now, in most of the people who took Tret, you either couldn't see any improvement or it was pretty small. In fact, only 10% of the TRET group had a moderate improvement to their fine lines. Here's Natalia. When I was reading these studies, I was surprised at how small the effect was. Right. 10% is not a lot. Like, no, I'm not saying it doesn't work, but it's not magic. It sure ain't magic. Even for those who saw a benefit.

It only seemed to help with their fine wrinkles. So nothing else, only fine lines. How fine are we talking? Pretty fine. Yeah, so as in like the lines that you perhaps can very slightly see around your eyes when you're not smiling. Right. Like the very faint, you have to kind of look carefully, like a very fine line.

It's when you are having a bad day and you look in the mirror for a really long time and you're like, oh, I'm not 21 anymore. Those lines, right? Yeah. Yes, yes. And they're very kind of, well, they're fine, as opposed to coarse lines or more static lines, which are thicker, deeper, like crevices in the skin. Those crevices, a.kices, aka my skeptical frown line, Tret isn't touching that. One of the earliest

studies into tretinoin noted this, writing, quote, lax, sagging, deeply wrinkled skin is beyond the repair of these creams. And the thing is, in those studies I just told you about with Renova, they all had lighter skin. There have been some studies in people from Asia using tretinoin for wrinkles, and it does seem to help. But when the company making Renova did a trial in about 100 people with darker skin, tret didn't seem to help.

In fact, more people in the control group who were not using Tret said their skin had improved. There is some evidence from other research that Tretinoin can reduce hyperpigmentation or sunspots in people with darker skin, but it also might lighten skin. There are also some well-known side effects of using Tret. Like during the first few months, it can increase your sensitivity to sunlight, upping the risk that you'll get sunburned. And when you first put it on, it's pretty common to get a bit of a reaction, which in some cases can be kind of yucky. Like just red flaky skin, you put makeup on, it's stingy, you can see the flakes, like just very irritated skin. Okay, so that is the prescription grade vitamin A that you need to get from your doctor. But then there's all these vitamin A

products that you can just buy over the counter, like retinol. Oz and I saw a ton of these in the store. Pure retinol. Retinol skin renewing. Retinol. These are weaker cousins of tretinoin. They don't tend to irritate your skin as much, but it also seems that they don't do anything for wrinkles. Well, this is what Natalia concluded after looking at a bunch of clinical trials on over-the-counter retinols, trials which had used an objective way to measure wrinkles to see if they literally get smaller on this stuff. And they didn't, really. Natalia published what she found in a peer-reviewed journal. This is the best paper I've ever written, ever.

It was sassy and informative. A bit bitchy. A little bit bitchy at the end, but I was like, God damn it. Just so you know, when it comes to academia, here's what bitchy sounds like. Natalia wrote that, quote, There is very little, if any, trustworthy evidence available to support the use of retinol-containing products to improve the appearance of aged skin. End quote. Also, out of an abundance of caution, it's not recommended to take any of these vitamin A creams if you're pregnant.

Natalia calls it like she sees it. And she says with over-the-counter creams that have retinol in them... I think they are a total waste of time and money. Yeah. A total waste of time and money. Right. I would not bother. Total, totally.

Yeah. Bottom line, over-the-counter vitamin A creams? Well, you heard the lady. But I asked Natalia, who has light skin, whether she uses the prescription stuff. Do you use tretinoin? Yes. Yes, I do. So because it's the best we have and it's the only thing we have that has any kind of

solid evidence base behind it, yes, absolutely use tretinoin. Okay. So our final question is, if it's so hard to make a skincare cream that really works, why does it seem like every product on the shelf is amazing? Like, if you look at an ad for skincare, there are all these stats they bust out about how well these products work. Oz and I saw them in the store.

Now skin feels firmer. 89% of women agreed. 52% saw smoothness. Minus 21% fine line. 91% agree skin feels healthy. You'll often see these claims supported by the words clinically proven. When did they ever said science? So where are all these science claims coming from? I want you to meet Kirsten Drysdale, a journalist at the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation who pulled one heck of a stunt to get to the bottom of all this. And in doing so, she was living by her own big life philosophy. Don't buy into the bulls**t. I just feel like we are surrounded in this world by bulls**t and people fall for it all the time. It just drives me crazy. It just drives me crazy.

So a few years ago when Kirsten was working on a TV show called The Checkout, I was working on it too, that's how we know each other, she and her producer reached out to a lot of the big skin care companies to ask. Oh, you know, we noticed you said 96% of people found this improved their skin. What is that test based on? Who conducted it? How was it conducted? She also looked through industry magazines and ultimately worked out that there's this collection of companies that

big skincare brands pay to run some of their clinical trials. But Kirsten wasn't too sure how much she could trust the science that they were pumping out. So, for example, one company, which is called Spin Control. I know, I was like, is this a joke? You have actually called yourself Spin Control. Kirsten read a quote from the site. Our aim is to perform studies as close as possible to your consumer's target. So, I mean, what they're saying there is they design their tests

to validate the marketing claims that you have already made. That's backward science. That's not how testing is supposed to work. You should be doing the tests first, seeing what the product can do and then making claims based on that, not reverse engineering an experiment to so-called prove your claims. We reached out to Spin Control to ask them about all this. They didn't get back to us. Okay, but when Kirsten was looking at all this, it just seemed so bizarre. Like, could you

really just give one of these companies any cream and they'd say it was great? There was one way to find out. Well, we thought if they can do it, why can't we? So we went and bought the cheapest moisturiser we could find, so like a litre tub of supermarket sorbolene. They also added some aloe vera. They gave it a name that sounded legit. Rejuvalise.

I mean, it's not that far off some of the most ridiculous names of real products. No, it really sounds like a skincare cream. And we contacted one of these labs. Oh, we just said we've got a new face cream product that we're about to launch and we'd like to get some clinical trials to back our marketing claims. They paid £2,000 to a company called Aspen Clinical Research, who agreed to send out the creams to 100 people, get them to use it for three weeks and then do an online survey

about their experience. You feel so naughty, but it's so fun because you go, well, if the big guys can do this, then little old me can do it too. I just got a bit nervous that maybe they would see through the fact that we had, like, $2 sorbolene cream and nobody would really like it. But the results came back and they were five star. Kirsten whipped out the report they sent her and we went through it. I notice a reduction in the look of lines and wrinkles, 98%. 98%.

98%. And then what's the next one? Well, the next one, this was just, you know, a swish. 100%, my skin feels more youthful. That is wild. 100%. That's how good our product was. So yeah, these are just meaningless numbers, completely meaningless numbers. After you did all this work, did it

change how you look at these skincare ads? Yeah, totally. I mean, I already, you know, I wasn't the kind of person that would pay them that much attention, but in a moment of vulnerability I could see myself in a supermarket aisle going, oh, yeah, that one looks legit, and my trust has been destroyed now, totally destroyed. We're not sure how these companies get these kinds of results. We reached out to Aspen Clinical Research to ask about this, but didn't hear back.

So who knows? It could be the placebo effect. Or perhaps because as soon as you put any old moisturizer on your skin, it can feel a little nicer. Moisturizers work not because they're putting moisture deep into your skin but because they act as a barrier so all the time that you've been listening to this podcast water in your skin has been evaporating into the air and a lot of moisturizers work because they sit on your skin making it harder for water to leave. I talked to Sue about this. So for most moisturizers, all that you're really doing is putting that layer of oil

on top of the skin that prevents this water loss. So your skin does look more hydrated. Other stuff in bog-standard moisturizers is designed to just sit on top of your skin and kind of fill in wrinkles. So it does make your skin look a bit nicer while it's on, but then it'll just rub off. And it probably doesn't matter what kind of moisturizer you use. Like one study of 80 Swedish women were randomized

to get either expensive cream or cheap stuff, and after six weeks there were no differences when it came to reducing wrinkles or making skin feel younger or more beautiful. So where does this leave us? If you want your skin looking youthful and healthy, what can you do? Well, remember how we talked about how awesome that skin on your butt is because it barely, naked, sees any UV rays? Well, that means that before wrinkles set in or to prevent bigger ones from forming, the only thing that comes in a bottle that you really need is sunscreen. One big study randomized almost a thousand people, getting some to use sunscreen every single day

and others just when they wanted it. And after four and a half years, the daily sunscreen group's skin barely changed, unlike the other group, who were more likely to have gotten wrinkles. Yes, yes, yes. So, sunscreen. Here's Natalia.

But aside from that, there is nothing that is essential skincare. And Natalia has gotten some backlash for telling people that their skincare might be bollocks. Because it's hard to accept the fact that a lot of the creams we're putting on our face don't really do anything. And that if you're not up for going under the knife or needles, we're kind of stuck with our wrinkles. It's my one little voice against this massively powerful marketing machine that its entire purpose is to sell you crap. It's just going to, it's never going to end.

Like we're going to have new skincare products every day for the rest of our lives. We're going to do all this work debunking and then tomorrow they're going to be all this work debunking and then tomorrow they're going to be like, new product out, centrifuge. That's what you got to put on your skin. This comes from the serum of a tortoise from some island in the Galapagos. That spins very fast. Like, and people are like, oh yeah, okay. Because there's this hope. We all want to look our best.

We all want to look young. And I totally understand that. But they're preying off our insecurities and making us believe that we need to do all this crap so we can look good, when actually you don't. And you look fine just the way you are. What's so bad about having a couple of wrinkles, right? He's Sue again.

Just shows that you've lived a life, you know, and you know what's so bad about that. I talked to Oz about everything I'd learned. That when it comes to the stuff we put on our skin, nothing's really going to make it tender and bouncy like it used to be. We just got to keep putting sunscreen on and hope for the best. Wow, okay that's so interesting. Okay. What do we do, Wendy?

How do we live in? We can't go outside anymore. I know. We just have to be happy with our faces. We do. We do. Okay. Okay.

That's interesting. This is a lot to take in, Wendy. You seem distraught. I am distraught. All lot to take in, Wendy. You seem distraught, Oz. I am distraught. All that money for nothing, Wendy. It's a scam, Wendy. It's a scam. Sounds like total bullsh**.

And it is. It is, Wendy. And I'm like, oh. That's science verses. Wendy, how you doing? I'm good I'm good Oz I I'm almost finished the skincare episode but there's one more thing to do I have to tell you how many citations are in this week's episode how many Wendy? Okay there are there's a hundred citations in this week's episode. Is that great? I don't know.

Are you impressed? Sounds alright. And if people want to see these citations, they should go to the show notes and there's a link to the transcript. So next week's episode is the dentist where we're looking into whether you really need to floss or even brush your teeth. That's interesting because I just started flossing. Really? I have just started flossing. What was your inspiration? Why did you start? You know what? Not that it was bad, but I thought it might improve my breath even more. That's why.

Thanks, Oz. Thanks, Wendy. Thanks, Wendy. This episode was produced by me, Wendy Zuckerman, with help from Joel Werner, Rose Rimler, Meryl Horne, Arina Tavich and Michelle Dang. We're edited by Blythe Sorrell. Mix and sound design by Catherine Anderson.

Music written by Bobby Lord, Emma Munger, So Wiley, Marcus Begala, Peter Leonard and Bumi Hidaka. Gimlet's managing director is Nicole BeemstierBohr. Fact-checking by Diane Kelly. Thanks to all the researchers who helped us with this episode, including Dr. Yusuf Mohamed, Professor Chris Anderson, Dr. Li-Feng Kang, Dr. Heather Benson and Professor Sarah Brown. A special thanks to Flora Lichtman, the Zuckerman family and Joseph Lavelle-Wil Wilson. Science Versus is a Spotify original podcast and a Gimlet production. Follow Science Versus on Spotify.

And if you want to receive notifications every time we put out a new episode, just tap on the bell icon. Go do it. Tap on that bell icon. Every time we have a new episode, bam, it'll come out and say, Science Versus new episode.

I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Back to you next time.